Halvarsson, Elina

Abstract [en]

One hundred years ago, boys and girls in Sweden went to school in two parallel educational systems. The girl schools were privately owned and had two educational goals; education for the household and education for work outside the home. The girl schools were free to give the education they thought was right, but around the turn of the century women’s education became an issue of growing political interest.

The purpose of my study is to shine light on the idea-political impact on the teaching in the turn of the century independent girl schools. I ask two questions; What types of subjects did girl school pupils write essays about, and how do they change over time? Seen from a genus perspective, what is the relation between the essay subjects and the idea-political trends at a higher societal level?

I conduct a quantitative study of Swedish essay subjects at a girl school in Växjö between the years 1884-1929. My results show that the essay subjects over time become less demanding and more of a cultural nature, back to educating girls for the purpose of being pretty and entertaining. This does not entirely follow the trend at a higher societal level, which develops towards a stronger focus on the household. Instead we can see it as a way of keep trying to segregate women from men by forming different behaviors and knowledge and directing them into different spheres of the society, in a society where women increasingly are integrating with traditional male spheres.